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Last month we wrote up a blog post about End-of-the-Year CSA Reporting and reminded you that this is a good time to get some feedback from your CSA members. Customer feeback is an important way to confirm that what you are offering is meeting the needs of your community, and Small Farm Central itself often uses surveys to gather information and evaluate our services. Recently we did our own end-of-the-year survey and we've compiled some of the highlights to share with you.

First off, there were a lot of great suggestions in the responses. We will use these suggestions to build a development roadmap for the next year. The suggestions keep us improving, but the positive comments keep us going! Here are just a few nice comments we received:

"Everything! We were so excited to switch to SFC this past June, just in time for our Summer Session, and we have gotten nothing but rave reviews from our members. The template is sleek and displays information very well, and we have already found that it makes a big difference in how new customers find us."

"That I can post a short "note" that will go out automatically to those subscribed to RSS, and now learning that I can have it go directly to our Facebook page too. I like that I can email for help and get a response, and that there are people I can speak with for help at SFC. Customer service is excellent, which is what I rave about to others when they tell me the problems they have with their websites."

"It is easy to use/update for the most part. Frankly, I just don't utilize/update it as much as I should."

Some other areas to highlight:

How likely are you to continue using Small Farm Central's services during the next year? 95% of respondents said "very likely" or "somewhat likely".

How strongly would you recommend Small Farm Central's services to others? 78% of respondents said "very strongly" or "strongly".

We are always interested in finding out how our CSA farmers are running their programs. This year we asked about customization options for CSA customers and found out the following:

Do you allow your CSA customers to do any type of customization to their shares? 36% are doing some sort of CSA customization 32% are considering it for the future 16% will never do customized CSA 15% other

What kind of CSA customization do you allow or do you want to allow? Full box customization through online interface 22% Partial box customization through online interface 18% Flexible weeks -- for example, members pick-up 16 of 20 weeks during the season 26% Pay-as-you-go CSA -- for example, $25/week until cancelled 17% Ability to change pick-up locations for a specific week or place box on hold and get a double-box later 45% Other 30%

We also inquired about mobile technology that farmers were currently using. This is a major area of interest to us moving forward and we see lots of opportunity for us to help our farms with the "mobile" world. The technology is definitely changing quickly!

In closing, we just want to thank those of you who took the time to fill out our survey. We want you to know that we value your responses and it means a lot that you took the time out of your day to assess our services. This kind of feedback is essential as we look to improve into the future.

Keep the feedback coming and we'll keep working to improve our software!

What's the best gift a farmer can give a loved one this holiday season?

One that's produced from the hard work they put in on their farm.

What's the second best gift? One produced by a fellow farmer!

For those of us without farms of our own, the best gift is any that supports the work of a small farmer. So for farmers, fans, and foodies alike, check out this list of gifts from some of the farmers that use Small Farm Central's website services to sell their goods online. Click on each farm name and you'll be taken directly to their online store!

Honey makes the best gift! It's practical and indulgent at the same time. Bedillion Honey farm in Western Pennsylvania sells their honey in a variety of sizes and in a transparent container. With the golden honey and farm logo on the bottle, all you need to do is add a ribbon. It's too pretty to wrap!

Garlic is the specialty at Knob View Farm, and they make their garlic salt with care in small batches. The ingredients include naturally evaporated sea salt and ground garlic, but their secret addition is roasted garlic seed for a richer garlic flavor in all your meat and vegetable dishes.

Based on the popularity of their farm-grown, full-fruit jams, Plum Granny Farm has added gift-sized versions of its top three varieties for the Holidays. These little gems in a jar are filled with Old Fashioned Raspberry Jam, Old Fashioned Blackberry Jam or Raspberry-Cranberry Jam and all are available on their website for ordering.

Eugene Wyatt at Catskill Merino Sheep Farm names his yarn after things that inspire him, be that an Impressionist painting, a New York City neighborhood or even a treat for his dog. Just browse the yarn store on his website and Eugene's rainbow will inspire you to gift his hand-dyed yarn to the knitters in your life, or even take up the hobby yourself!

Vollmecke Orchards has put together a trio of delicious fruit butters. They are all made in small batches using fresh fruits, a little citrus, some spices and a touch of white grape juice concentrate to sweeten them up a bit. All delicious as a topping for vanilla ice cream, swirled into yogurt or used in baking. Bring them along with you on your holiday travel, they make the perfect hostess gift!

Most traditional CSA farmers are finishing up the final weeks of their 2013 CSA program around this time of the year. We at Small Farm Central hope it was a successful season for you. In the same way that school teachers always laugh if you ask if they are excited for their "time off" when the school year ends, we know that farmers never really have time off, even when the ground is unworkable and sometimes the roads are impassable. One of the tasks you'll find yourself doing this winter is a reassessment of your CSA program's business model. What worked? What didn't? What can be improved or used as a new opportunity? Your Small Farm Central reporting tools can help inform those decisions.

The Income Report at Member Assembler > Statistics contains compiled data for all of the invoices for a season. In addition to the counts of shares, which you've been looking at all year, you also have totals for Coupons you've given out, manual Adjustments you've made, plus any Discounts and Charges that you configured. Some things you might consider while going over this information:

-How well did some of your marketing strategies work out with specific Coupons? Is it worth expanding that or saving yourself the effort?

-How much did you recoup in credit card transaction fees? Did it wind up balancing what you lost in processing fees?

-What about early signup discounts? Does it seem that many people used it? Is there a way to simplify your life a little by rolling a lot of types of discounts into one using a percentage rather than flat amounts?

Retention is always a good indication of program success. Using the new tool also at Member Assembler > Statistics, you can see not only what percent of your memberships continued from one season to another, you can also see how this breaks down by Pickup Location and Member Type. How well did you do with Retention this year compared to last year? Did one Pickup perform considerably poorer than the others? It might be worth deciding if there was an issue with that location and maybe finding a replacement for next year. Is the retention rate really high for folks who got a new specialized share type? That could just be an indication that more of your committed members chose it or it could be that it gave customers a strong sense of satisfaction in its value. You can also compare your own numbers to our other Member Assembler CSAs by looking at the Benchmark data.

Reviewing this information will help you to make decisions about what should be changed for your next season and to see where your main focus will lie. If Retention is good, you can feel confident in what you offer and your service. Use your great reputation in your marketing efforts. If retention seems on the lower side, concentrate on ways to fixing the issues so that customers will want to return season after season.

Lastly, if you are also a website customer of Small Farm Central, you probably already know about the custom forms you can build at Create Content > Forms. This is a great opportunity to get direct feedback from your members as to their satisfaction with your CSA and things they'd like to see. You can also take advantage of survey software online. Lots of companies offer a free version to try out. It always helps to offer an incentive to the customers who take time out of their day to fill something out. How about a drawing for that fifty-pound pumpkin you've been wondering who's going to take off your hands?

Small Farm Central is proud to announce that we will once again be partnering with the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture to present the CSA Expert Exchange online conference. The 2014 CSA Expert Exchange has been expanded to two days - a two-hour evening session on Thursday, March 6th focused on "Beginner CSA" sessions and a four-hour daytime session on Friday, March 7th featuring sessions aimed at CSA farmers of all levels of experience.

The 2013 CSA Expert Exchange was a great success with over 200 attendees. We hope to gather an even larger group together this year. We are excited about the mix of presenters we are bringing you in 2014. We are still finalizing the schedule, but the current list of presenters and their topics are:

We are offering Early-Bird pricing for those who register by January 1, 2014. You can chose to register for just one day's sessions or both day's sessions. BEGINNER CSA = $20 (price goes up to $25 after 1/1/14) MAIN EVENT = $40 (price goes up to $55 after 1/1/14) BOTH DAYS = $55 (price goes up to $70 after 1/1/14)

As with last year's event, this should be accessible from most any computer with a reliable internet connection. A recorded version of the event will be made available to all registrants after the live event for future reference.

As CSA programs end and Farmers Markets close for the winter, this edition of the We Love Our Farmers photo series reminds us that we will do it all again next year! Here is a photo of Town Farm's early season action at market.

"This is a photo of Town Farm crew members selling our produce on opening day at Tuesday Market in Northampton, MA. The radishes in the picture were grown in our high tunnel and harvested April 30th, just in time to renovate the beds and transplant this year's tomatoes. Town Farm is a six-acre farm run by Oona Coy & Ben James, who also started and manage Tuesday Market."

It is that time of year when many farms are wrapping up their main CSA season and are realizing that some of their members still have outstanding balances. What is the best way to figure out who owes what? And what is the best way to communicate to your members what they owe and how to pay?

FINDING OUT WHO HAS AN OUTSTANDING BALANCE

An important note to remember is that the amount in the balance field for a member is their balance across all seasons for which they have been a member. So even if a member is paid up for the most recent season, it is possible they could be showing a balance due to activity from previous seasons or due to signing up for a new season.

To find out what members are still showing a balance owed, navigate to:Member Assembler > Members > View Members

Make sure that you have all advanced filters and searches removed so that it displays your complete list of members. Then click on the title above the “Balance” column to sort them based on that column. If you click on it once, it should show it lowest to highest balance; if you click it again, it should show it highest to lowest.

You can also use the "Advanced Filter" section located at the top of this page to search by balance. The balance search will pull up memberships with an outstanding balance of greater than or equal to the amount that you enter into this field. To search for all outstanding balances, put 0.01 and your results will show all memberships owing you one penny or more.

REQUESTING PAYMENT OF OUTSTANDING BALANCES

Now that you have a sense of how many members have outstanding balances and how large those balances are, you can send out a payment request to your members. To do so, navigate to:Member Assembler > Accounting > Payment Request

Click on the “Add a Payment Request” link in the yellow bar. This will bring up a screen where you create your payment request. Since it is the end of the season, we’ll assume that you want to get 100% paid up for any outstanding balances.

Step 1: If you are trying to get paid in full for ANY outstanding balances, you will select the first option “Percentage of Overall Member Balance”. If you are only concerned with getting paid in full for the season that is currently ending, choose the “Percentage of Balance Remaining on <season> Invoice” option (you’ll need to make sure you are administering the season that you are trying to collect the balances from).. Then put “100” in the “Request Amount” field.

Step 2: In this step you can further narrow your request parameters. First, you can sort out only people who have at least a certain amount outstanding. So if you are only interested in sending out a payment request to people who owe more than $50, you can enter it here. At this point in the season you probably want the request to go to anyone with an outstanding balance. In that case, leave the amount at $.01. In this step you can also select only members with specific member types to receive the payment request.

Step 3: At the bottom of the page there will be a default email created for you. This email has variables in it that will fill in with the individual member’s specific information. If you allow for online payments, the email will include a link to your online payment page. If you want to include additional information in the email, you can customize the message as needed. When ready, click “Save and Select Users”.

Step 4: At this point a sample version of the payment request will come up on the screen and a list of all members fitting your search criteria will be listed below it. Read over the email and make sure it includes all the information you want and that the formatting is correct.

If you are ready to send the payment request, select the users that you want to receive it (usually you’ll want to send it to all of them, but you can select which specific members from the list you want to receive it) and then click the “Send Payment Request” button. If you are not ready to send the payment request yet, that’s ok. At this point the payment request is saved and you can come back to it later to send. Simply re-navigate to the Payment Request page when you are ready and click the “Edit/Send” link next to the payment request to access it again.

AN IMPORTANT NOTE: If you accept online credit card payments and have a “online transaction fee” for members who pay by credit card, be aware that that fee is only calculated at the initial checkout. If you have members who initially checked out as “invoice only” but decide to make a later payment by credit card, they will not be charged that online transaction fee. Be aware of this if you offer these multiple payment options. In your email you may want to make clear that unless a member has previously paid by credit card that they should not use the credit card payment option.

Earlier this Fall, we encouraged our CSA farmers to go back to schooland learn about what's new with our Member Assembler software, but just because you're not running a CSA, doesn't mean you're off the hook. There are plenty of opportunities out there to refresh your knowledge and learn about what's new in small farming.

Farm Education Vacation

If you're looking to take a little break from from the homestead, consider mixing work with a vacation. There are a lot events happening this winter, with opportunities to stay close to home or travel across the country and visit someplace new. Here are just a few of the upcoming farm conferences and educational sessions for you to check out. Visit the Small Farm Central Facebook page to see what other events farmers are talking about.

Online Learning

For those of you who don't want to move a muscle this winter and prefer to stay by your wood burning stove (like me!), an online webinar, like the ones listed below, is a great way learn from home for free! A simple google search can bring up many options, but here are some to get your started.

Farm Commons, a nonprofit legal services organization is offering 2 webinars about farm legal issues each month beginning in December and running through March. They tip off the series with an "Overview of Farm Legal Issues" on December 2nd. Following sessions include topics on CSA legal issues, farm workers, and food safety regulations. Check their website for a full list of dates and topics.

Practical Farmers of Iowa posts a schedule of their "Farminars" for each season on their website or you can subscribe directly to their podcast. They also have an archive of viewable past topics that goes back to 2009.

Save the Date!

Small Farm Central and the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture will once again be hosting the CSA Expert Exchange online conference on March 6th & 7th, 2014. Join us for one or both days right from your home computer. Check out the CSA Expert Exchange website here: http://csafarmconference.com/ and stay tuned for more details!

The Charge/Discount section of Member Assembler is already filled with easy tools to help you set up discounts or charges that can be applied during your member sign-up process. There are ways to prorate your share costs so that you can continue to accept members even after you've started delivery, a tool that lets you add charges to certain share types or pickup locations, and even a way to limit the amount a time that a charge or discount is valid.

Recently we've added another way to offer discounts to your members. This new option is called the "Charge/Discount for Multiple Member Type Combination". It works like this:

Suppose you've set up your new season to be an all-year at once signup. You have a Member Type for a Spring Share, a Member Type for a Summer Share, and a Member Type for a Fall Share with different prices and Options for each. To encourage people to sign up early for all your seasons, you'd like to offer a discount. However, you only want the discount to be applied if people choose an option and sign up for all three of these Member Types. In the past, there were more complicated solutions to achieving this type of discount, but our new option makes this easier for you.

To get to the Charge/Discount section of the Control Panel navigate to: Member Assembler > Configure > Charge/Discounts. Once there, click on the "Charge/Discount for Multiple Member Type Combination". All you need to do is mark which of your Member Types you want people to choose to recieve your discount. Then, when your member checks out during the sign-up process, if they've chosen an option from each of those types, they'll get the discount! This is a great way to encourage people to support your farm with a greater initial commitment and reward your most supportive customers.

For more detailed instructions on creating a discount like this, and to remind yourself of all of the charge/discount tools at your disposal, revisit the updated Charges & Discounts Cookbook article in the Small Farm Central Knowledge Base.